FOR THE LOVE OF APHRODITE (Brontes the Cyclops)

1.pertainingto a
sense of the
beautiful or to the science of aesthetics.

2.havingasenseof the beautiful;
characterized by a love of beauty.

3.
pertaining to, involving,
or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as
opposed to
pure intellectuality.

Love-noun.

1. A deep, tender,
ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person,
such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive
qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.

2. A feeling of intense
desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed
to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.

a. Sexual passion.

b. Sexual
intercourse.

c. A love affair.

It is ironic. To be so ugly and love someone so
beautiful. To expect her to overlook my flaws as I loose myself ,
spellbound by her perfection. Aphrodite. My Goddess. My
obsession. My love.

The Love of my life who will never be mine. I saw
her the day she was born, and I reborn, yet our paths have not
crossed since. It is torturous to feel so much after such
fleeting association. As cruel as being thrown down to the depths
of darkness in an underground abyss.

I should know. For I am Brontes........

My mother was born from before. Before humanity,
before the universe, before anything. Submerging from the
vastness and darkness of Chaos ,Gaea, my mother appeared. An
embodiment of the living Earth, her deep breasted form rejoiced
in the birth of creation. But she was a mother deity and soon
found her solitude tiresome. To end her isolation and evoke her
maternity she created a consort, Uranus and soon after crafted
the universe.

I wonder if my life would have ended differently,
had she chosen more wisely. What did she really look for in a
mate and did my father encompass it? It is too late to ask now;
ask from down here where no one goes.

First came my brothers and sisters, the Titans.
Athletic and beautiful, they passed inspection. Their physical
form ensured that they would be adored. They passed the
aesthetics test and could be rewarded with our father's love.
What of me and my brothers? Were we really that different? Strong
and athletic too; articulate and intelligent. Does the absence of
one eye really make so much difference?

Apparently so. A Cyclops; a single eyed creature,a
monster, a discarded being. My initial punishment was not
isolation. If maternal love is all encompassing and
unconditional, paternal hatred can be scathing and murderous.
Uranus devoured us. Ate us whole. Consumed our life source and
stored us in his digestive system, close enough to his cold
heart. It was horrific watching him engulf my brothers.
Swallowing them away with maniacal intensity. As if that would
solve the problem. It did for a while.

Gaea was a mother. Where others saw disfigurement
she saw hope and dreams. Where her husband saw mutation, she saw
progeny. At first Gaea mourned her lost boys, the children she
nurtured with her life giving womb. When the pain dissipated,
fury took over. A rage permeated her entire being, burning like
the fire she created at the beginning of time.

My father was foolish and arrogant. Equipping him
with intellect instead of vanity could have prevented his
downfall. Would I want such a thing? Do I seek his approval,
instead of his repulsion even now? My mother channeled her anger
into revolution. A conspiracy calculated, one that would provide
her with both vengeance and the live return of her lost
children.

The Titans, like most children, were a product of
mother and father. They would not betray one to placate the
other. They would not betray one to avenge the brothers that they
too resented and considered an aberration. Gaea's plan seemed
destined to fail. But Destiny wasn't in the mood for
failure.

Unsuspecting Uranus slept in his bed,accompanied
by Darkness, awaiting the arrival of his wife, but without much
urgency. His belly warm with wine that worked like a river
bathing his horrendous sons. He felt euphoric. He basked in his
cleverness, his contentment, his conceit. Hubris is never
rewarded, and forgetting who his maker was, was foolish
indeed.

Upon Gaea's instruction, Cronus drew a sharp
sickle and carved a line into his father's abdomen,

enough to cause pain and torment, but without the
power to kill. From the hole a deluge of blood poured to the bed,
running towards the other gash. The gash that rendered him
imperfect. Whilst I still had my lone eye, my father had nothing
remaining of his manhood. The impudent fool was now impotent.
Nothing left but a monstrous scar and a pool of blood.

My victorious brother smirked and threw the
genitals out the window, as if they vermin rather than the things
that helped him enter the world. What occurred next was beyond
amazing, and if it wasn't for my need to maintain faith for my
own mental survival, I would imagine it was a dream. Just a dream
that emerged when I was in the boundary between life and death
after my father's attempt at infanticide.

From those coarse organs (saturated in blood and
smelling like rotten meat) arose a miracle. As they met the sea,
the water frothed and boiled until a woman emerged from the
bubbles. She looked like a woman. But to call her such does
little to illustrate her divinity or her perfection. The term
perfection itself seems insufficient to demonstrate the extent of
her flawlessness. Everything that was good and pure and radiant
paled in comparison to her glorious facade. She was
magnificent.

She returned my gaze. What was her expression? It
was not one of hate. It was not one of revulsion. It was not one
easy to interpret. There was a pleading behind her beautiful
eyes, was she expressing remorse for what had been, or what was
to come? How did she know either past or future? Was she
prophetic?

For that moment, we were as one. She was my
Aphrodite. And I her Brontes the Cyclops. There was no
distinction between beauty and ugliness. There was no hierarchy.
Just us. Just us and what we had to tell each other. If we were
ever to be given the chance.

Cronus may have been my saviour, but not for long.
He gave us the gift of salvation to appease our mother, but that
did not mean he shared her sympathies. One moment my eyes were
locking with my beloved, the next my whole being was traveling
through time and space into the bowels of the underground where
there is no light to see my wretchedness. An incidental cruel
irony , as no one ever travels here to even sense the existence
of my unsightliness. No one shares this space beyond me and my
brothers.

I wonder if they can. I wonder if we are somehow
unreachable to others as we are imprisoned ourselves. I wonder
about mother and how her maternal devotion removed us from the
claws of death, but did nothing to prevent us being lost to her
forever again in a parallel existence. Did she cry for us? Did
she scheme against Cronus for banishing us, just as she schemed
against our father? Did she feel paralysed, not wanting to side
against any of her children? Did she actively side against us,
choosing the beautiful ones over those of us deemed
imperfect?

But mainly I dream about Aphrodite. What might
have been. What still may be if I am foolish enough to allow hope
to distort my already fragile psyche. I dream about Aphrodite and
what words were unwritten behind those eyes.